Tweet
“Frank, you don't have to 'believe' those timings, and equally no one has the right to say that Fisherman was inventing things and fabricating evidence either, just because they don't like them or don't put too much value in them.“
Yes we do actually because if you had read what has actually been said you would know that the omission in the book and the documentary were entirely deliberate. It cannot have been otherwise.
In The Missing Evidence, Christer said this as he and Andy Griffiths were about to set out to walk Cross’s route from Doveton Street to Durward Street:
“He said at the inquest that he left at 3.30. Some reports say 3.20 but the more common reports say 3.30.”
So it can’t be clearer can it. Christer is saying that the majority of newspaper reports (which he’d obviously checked during his research - how could he not have?) said that Charles Cross left his home at 3.30 - not ‘about 3.30’ not ‘around 3.30’ not ‘approximately 3.30’ but exactly 3.30.
How he could have looked at them and then gone for ‘3.30’ is incomprehensible.
When this was brought up Christer said:
“We must however accept that since the absolute bulk of the papers spoke of ”around 3.30”, that is by far the likeliest wording to have been given.”
So here we have Christer admitting (he had no choice of course) that ‘about 3.30,’ was correct. Christer knew it when he said it and he knew it at the time of the documentary. Are we expected to believe that he forgot to mention the word ‘about.’ Could anyone be that gullible? I’m assuming not. The meaning is clear - Christer knew that Cross said ‘about 3.30’ but he left it out. Was he concerned about the word count and that ‘about’ became one of the words culled?
Again I don’t think that anyone could believe this. A decision was taken to leave it out.
Then we have the fact that the word ‘about’ was also omitted from Cutting Point. Christer responds by saying that ‘about’ was used in Cutting Point but the problem of course is that the word wasn’t used in the section that actually dealt with the gap, so a reader who is less up with the details of the case would have to recall the one word difference and make the connection. On the occasion when the ‘about’ actually became vital to the point being made at the time it went AWOL. So in Cutting Point, Charles Cross again leaves his house at 3.30 and not at ‘about 3.30.’
I asked Christer - how could he be totally aware now about the ‘about 3.30’ but at the time of the documentary and of writing the book he wasn’t? Did he read those reports as part of his research but then ‘forget’ that detail when it came to the documentary and the book? If so, when looking specifically at a point where ‘about’ makes such a significant difference how did he manage to do this? He replied:
“It has always been obvious, and it was not intentionally omitted in my book. I have already explained a large number of times that there was no intention to mislead, and that I have the ”around” in a quotation from a paper plus that I urge people not to take timings as gospel. I also never say that SINCE he left at 3.30, he MUST have …, I say that IF he left at 3.30 and so on. So the only misleading there is, is if you call it an intentional effort to deceive.”
No one, and I do mean no one, could be blind to the very obvious evasiveness of this answer.
To suggest that these two omissions weren’t intentional simply flies in the face of some very obvious and totally inarguable facts. If anyone reads the above and then defends the omissions in both documentary and book then they are not looking at the situation in an unbiased way. A 100% deliberate attempt to create a gap to convince a Barrister that a transparently innocent witness was ‘suspicious’ when he wasn’t. There isn’t a single fact, not one, the should lead anyone to suspect Cross of anything.
Yes we do actually because if you had read what has actually been said you would know that the omission in the book and the documentary were entirely deliberate. It cannot have been otherwise.
In The Missing Evidence, Christer said this as he and Andy Griffiths were about to set out to walk Cross’s route from Doveton Street to Durward Street:
“He said at the inquest that he left at 3.30. Some reports say 3.20 but the more common reports say 3.30.”
So it can’t be clearer can it. Christer is saying that the majority of newspaper reports (which he’d obviously checked during his research - how could he not have?) said that Charles Cross left his home at 3.30 - not ‘about 3.30’ not ‘around 3.30’ not ‘approximately 3.30’ but exactly 3.30.
How he could have looked at them and then gone for ‘3.30’ is incomprehensible.
When this was brought up Christer said:
“We must however accept that since the absolute bulk of the papers spoke of ”around 3.30”, that is by far the likeliest wording to have been given.”
So here we have Christer admitting (he had no choice of course) that ‘about 3.30,’ was correct. Christer knew it when he said it and he knew it at the time of the documentary. Are we expected to believe that he forgot to mention the word ‘about.’ Could anyone be that gullible? I’m assuming not. The meaning is clear - Christer knew that Cross said ‘about 3.30’ but he left it out. Was he concerned about the word count and that ‘about’ became one of the words culled?
Again I don’t think that anyone could believe this. A decision was taken to leave it out.Then we have the fact that the word ‘about’ was also omitted from Cutting Point. Christer responds by saying that ‘about’ was used in Cutting Point but the problem of course is that the word wasn’t used in the section that actually dealt with the gap, so a reader who is less up with the details of the case would have to recall the one word difference and make the connection. On the occasion when the ‘about’ actually became vital to the point being made at the time it went AWOL. So in Cutting Point, Charles Cross again leaves his house at 3.30 and not at ‘about 3.30.’
I asked Christer - how could he be totally aware now about the ‘about 3.30’ but at the time of the documentary and of writing the book he wasn’t? Did he read those reports as part of his research but then ‘forget’ that detail when it came to the documentary and the book? If so, when looking specifically at a point where ‘about’ makes such a significant difference how did he manage to do this? He replied:
“It has always been obvious, and it was not intentionally omitted in my book. I have already explained a large number of times that there was no intention to mislead, and that I have the ”around” in a quotation from a paper plus that I urge people not to take timings as gospel. I also never say that SINCE he left at 3.30, he MUST have …, I say that IF he left at 3.30 and so on. So the only misleading there is, is if you call it an intentional effort to deceive.”
No one, and I do mean no one, could be blind to the very obvious evasiveness of this answer.
To suggest that these two omissions weren’t intentional simply flies in the face of some very obvious and totally inarguable facts. If anyone reads the above and then defends the omissions in both documentary and book then they are not looking at the situation in an unbiased way. A 100% deliberate attempt to create a gap to convince a Barrister that a transparently innocent witness was ‘suspicious’ when he wasn’t. There isn’t a single fact, not one, the should lead anyone to suspect Cross of anything.
Comment